ECAULT BEACH, France (news agencies) — Across the English Channel, the U.K.’s white cliffs beckon. On fine days, men and women with children in their arms and determination in their eyes can see the shoreline of what they believe will be a promised land as they attempt the perilous crossing clandestinely, ditching belongings to squeeze aboard flimsy inflatable boats that set to sea from northern France.
In a flash, on one recent crossing attempt, French police swooped in with knives, wading into the water and slashing the boat’s thin rubber — literally deflating the migrants’ hopes and dreams.
Some of the men put up dispirited resistance, trying to position themselves — in vain — between the boat and the officers’ blades. One splashed water at them, another hurled a shoe. Cries of “No! No!” rang out. A woman wailed.
But the team of three officers, one also holding a pepper-gas canister, lunged at the boat again and again, pitching some of those aboard into the surf as it quickly deflated. media obtained video of the police boat-slashing, filmed on a beach near the French port of Boulogne.
France’s northern coast has long been fortified against invasion, with Nazi bunkers in World War II and pre-French Revolution forts. Now, France is defending beaches with increasing aggression against migrants trying at a record pace to go the other way — out to sea, to the U.K.
Under pressure from U.K. authorities, France’s government is preparing to give an even freer hand to police patrols that, just last week, were twice filmed slashing boats carrying men, women and children.
The video obtained by news agencies was filmed Monday. Four days later, on Écault beach south of Boulogne, the BBC filmed police wading into the surf and puncturing another boat with box cutters, again pitching people into the water as it deflated.
An news agencies journalist who arrived moments later counted multiple lacerations and saw dispirited people, some still wearing life jackets, clambering back up sand dunes toward woods inland. There, news agencies had spent the previous night with families and men waiting for a crossing, sleeping rough in a makeshift camp without running water or other basic facilities. Exhausted children cried as men sang songs and smoked around a campfire.
The French Interior Ministry told news agencies that police haven’t been issued orders to systematically slash boats. But the British government — which is partly funding France’s policing efforts — welcomed what it called a “toughening” of the French approach. The U.K. is also pushing France to go further and let officers intervene against boats in deeper waters, a change the government in Paris is considering. Campaigners for migrant rights and a police union warn that doing so could endanger both migrants and officers.
Of the slashing filmed Friday by the BBC, the Interior Ministry said the boat was in distress, overloaded and riding low in the water, with migrants “trying to climb aboard from the back, risking being caught by the propeller.”
“The gendarmes, in water up to their knees, intervened to rescue people in danger, pull the boat to shore and neutralize it,” the ministry said.
Around the campfire, the men stared into the flames and ruminated. Deniz, a Kurd with an infectious laugh and a deep singing voice, wanted more than anything to cross the channel in time to celebrate his 44th birthday in August with his 6-year-old daughter, Eden, who lives with her mother in the U.K. Like nearly all the migrating people that news agencies interviewed, surviving in camps that police frequently dismantle, Deniz didn’t want to give his full name.
Refused a short-stay U.K. visa, Deniz said he had no other option than the sea route, but four attempts ended with police wrecking the boats. He said that on one of those occasions, his group of around 40 people begged an officer patrolling alone to turn a blind eye and let them take to sea.
“He said, ‘No,’ nobody going to stop him. We could stop him, but we didn’t want, you know, to hurt him or we didn’t want to argue with him,” Deniz said. “We just let him, and he cut it with a knife.”
He believes that U.K. funding of French policing is turning officers into zealots.
